Millenium Homes [VERY LONG]

["Keith Doxey" <keith.doxey@xxxxxxx>]

Hi All,

Today I attended an excellent lecture given by Professor Heinz Wolfe of
Brunel University (and Great Egg Race fame).

The subject for the lecture was Millenium Homes and the kind of technology
that he believes will be in common use in the next few years. I was
expecting to see all kinds of gizmo's and gadgets but the lecture opened up
many new avenues of thought for me.

Until now I have always looked upon Home Automation as a provider of cool
features for the gadget mad and as a means of providing assistance with
physical disabilities or impairments. He acknowledged the existance of the
"Smart Home" concept where the house could be controlled from
anywhere and
performed a variety of self management tasks without user intervention but
pointed out that it was only part of the role an Intelligent Home could
perform.

What he described was a "Caring Home" designed to assist the
elderly and
semi-infirm to continue to live an independant and dignified existance in
their own home rather than to shove then into a home and wait for them to
die.

The emphasis was on monitoring the wellbeing of the occupant rather than
controlling the home or taking control away from the owner, although in the
case of obvious danger such as excess water flow or gas turned on but not
lit, then the service would be shut off and the alarm raised. that isnt to
say than the system cant be used for control if required to assist someone
has difficulties in one way or another.

Monitoring takes place on things like - doors, beds, chairs, rooms, toilet
being occupied, toilet being flushed, fridge being opened and closed, bath
being ru/overflowing etc. The system had different levels of concern. For
instance, if the normal sleep pattern of the owner was 10pm - 7am the
system
would not worry if they were still in bed at 0730 but would be getting
concerned by 0830 and by 0900 giving voice announcements saying "do
you
think you should be getting up now". Acting on the tone of the reply
is
could then ask questions that required simple YES/NO answers to either
reassure itself or raise the alarm. eg "Do you feel unwell",
"Do you need
the doctor" etc. Obviously a total lack of reply would be taken as an
immeadiate emergency.

The toilet being flushed 3 times in an hour during the early hours might
indicate a case of food poisoning. Likewise, the fridge not being opened
for
a period of 8 or more hours might indicate the occupant wasnt eating
properly etc

I feel that some of these features combined with the Smart Home concept
could make a really good system.

After the lecture there were several questions from the audience and one
really interesting one was on the subject of the reliability (or lack ) of
the software. Prof. Wolfe's reply was very interesting. He said that the
system was monitoring the house and a fast response was not essential, by
fast he meant milliseconds, and that a couple of minutes to respond to a
sensor was not overly critical, therefore the system could be made to
periodically reboot itself to ensure that any bugs got cleared out.

He did also say that....
"a popular and widely used operating system might not be the best
choice
for such a system"
....which got a good response from the audience :-))

He also mentioned Door Locks and showed prototype locks designed for
allowing carers to enter the home to provide assistance. The one shown was
Chubb lock (Yale type key not 5 lever) with special notched cut into the
back of the key. There were only a small number of combinations, (my guess
is 32 or 64) which are read by photoelectric sensors in the barrel. The key
doesnt operate the lock but merely indicated to the computer the user/users
of that particular key. If the computer has raise the alarm in will
recognise that help has arrived and open the electrically operated lock. At
any other time that key is useless but it could be used for several houses
in one area. One important thing mentioned about the design of the locks
was
that it HAD TO LOOK NORMAL to prevent indicating to undesireables that a
potentially vulnerable person lived there. that instantly made me think
about the recent discussion here about iButton/Fingerprint/Iris
recognition,
those houses would look anything but normal. He also said they were working
on 5 lever mortice locks because of insurance companies etc.

Looks like some of the hardware we desire could be available fairly soon.

On the question of cost he said the intended target price for a typical
sysem was < £3000 but that he expected the systems to be leased for
50-60
pounds per week rather than bought outright. That charge would include a
fee
to cover the callcentres involved  in the monitoring process. He expects
the
takeup to be quite high with lots of interest from Health Insurers who see
paying £50 per week to enable people to live independantly as a much nicer
alternative to paying £500 per week to put them in care.

Privicy was also meantioed a great deal, and it was pointed out that NO
cameras are used although they can be if desired and that no data leaves
the
house unless the computer or user wants it to.

He talked at length about the difficulties of voice recognition at any
distance above a few inches particularly in the presence of other noises
and
said that when the system needed to "interrogate" you, it would
mute all
possible sources of noise eg TV, Hifi, Fans etc to improve recognition. He
also said that the best voice for the system to talk to you in was....YOUR
OWN. He said there is nothing wrong with talking to yourself :-))

He also mentioned a program that can be found on the internet called
"Game
Commander" or something like that for $49-99. It is primarily intended
for
using voice control of computer games by simulating the required keystrokes
and can be customised to a large degree. He currently has it working with a
vocabulary of around 200 words and has had good recognition over several
metres using a cheap PC microphone. There are a few small drawbacks
though...as it is primarily intended for games, he cant get it to respond
to
the word "HELP" but if an emergency occurs he can shout "GET
OUT OF THE
COCKPIT" and it works :-))
The other thing he said about Game Commander was that it reponded well even
with quite high levels of ambient noise.

He also said that a Millenium Homes website would be online in the near
future.

Keith Doxey
http://www.btinternet.com/~krazy.keith
Krazy Keith's World of DIY HomeAutomation


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